Posted by:
Gavin Martin
Director, Tenant Representation
Corporate Solutions

Vodafone has grown from a 50-person office in Newbury, UK in 1984 to a turnover of 41 billion euro and 80,000 staff today. Their workplace requirements have changed substantially!

The latest part of their journey is incorporating flexible work practices into their real estate strategy. Two of Vodafone’s key developments led the way for their change transformation, these being the headquarters in New Zealand followed by their new Headquarters in Amsterdam, Holland.

Vodafone challenged existing paradigms in workplace practices and introduced the concept of Life Rhythm – where they empowered their people to choose a working style that suited their lifestyle. Management’s thinking had to change from measuring people by results not attendance. Even areas like HR and Accounts adopted these work practices with people in these teams encouraged to interact with the business and not sit at their desks. 80% of the HR staff in Amsterdam facility did not have a desk and 60% of the Accounts team did not have an allocated desk.

As well as driving better engagement, productivity and showcasing their product suite, Vodafone’s workplace strategy also resulted in a 25% cost saving across their portfolio, equating to 400 million euro.

Vodafone soon realised that a one size fits all approach would not work across their global portfolio. The key to getting it right is finding the appropriate balance between technology, culture and space. The global CRE team at Vodafone have just two KPIs – 12 sqm per person and 120% efficiency in their portfolio. How the local teams achieve these targets is up to them.

Gavin